"YOU don't even know where your... sister is," Jamie panted.

The loud rumble of thunder reverberated through the air, as the wind howled, slamming against the windows with a force that made them rattle in their frames.

The raging weather outside was a perfect reflection of the state of the living room.

Chairs and cushions were strewn about, their fabrics twisted and torn. Silver machinations from the depths of her creativity stabbed into anything and everything. A jagged block of ice protruded from the wall, along with many others, some splintered, some whole that stretched across the room, plunging the atmosphere tens of degrees below zero. As chaotic as it was, it stood as a perfect picture of their unwillingness to relent.

She should have been shaking down to her bones, but sweat threaded down her temple and made her hair cling to her neck in a tangled mess. The air was thick and cold, and every breath she took felt like a puncture of ice in her lungs.

"But you can find that out," she said between breaths.

"What makes you think I'm going to help you?"

"Look around Jamie. We can't keep going on at this. Kara and Elowen need us-"

"Gema and Marcela are handling it!"

"Have they contacted you since?"

The raging thunder above replaced the silence.

He sighed and ran his hand over his cropped hair, stopping it to scratch at the back. She prodded on when he said nothing.

"They could need your help, too."

He sighed in resignation. Enough of an act to tell her she had won the mental battle.

"Follow me."

Outside, the rain came down harder than she had ever known in Emerfield. Perhaps even the heavens knew things were changing, irrevocably.

They dashed toward the barn, and once their two feet were in, Jamie got to spell casting. She knew because of his hand movements and mutterings of foreign words.

In the next moment, a blue mist vaporized from his hands, merging and dancing in slow but certain motion before it solidified into a door.

The door stood alone in the middle of the barn with no wall beside it. His hard gaze met hers when he turned.

"Once we're there, you're going to do whatever I tell you to. You move when I say so, jump when I say so, and run when I say so. Is that clear?"

Her words failed her, so she could only nod.

The thunderbolts above didn't jolt her as much as before. Instead, her nerves welcomed it and somehow transmitted energy from it into her. The hairs on her skin stood at attention as he opened the door, and a portal of red and blue swirled in a ferocious endless chase around each other. Those colors were of him and Gema, and she assumed the door would take them to Gema. Jamie stepped in and she watched his body spin and disappear through it.

"Here goes nothing," she said as she put her leg through. Her feet sunk into nothing and her hands rose in a desperate attempt to steel herself but before she could let out a yelp, her feet touched the rock-solid floor.

In the next moment, a powerful explosion echoed around her, sending shockwaves through her body. A tremor rattled the floor, causing her to stumble and flail her hands in search of something to grab onto. The heavy scent of smoke hit her nostrils like a wave, causing her eyes to water. She heard someone beside her curse before they forcefully grabbed her hand and pulled her down into a crouched position.

She twisted to see that the person was Jamie, who kept his eyes trained on something ahead. She could see the reflection in his eyes, but it was only until she saw it for herself that she felt goosebumps down her spine.

Not too far from where they crouched behind a bush that served as their shelter was Emerfield City Hall, engulfed in flames. She found Gema levitating high in the air, with fists surrounded by flames. The shivers Karyn felt when she saw the burning city hall were nothing compared to the ice-cold dread that flooded her when her eyes drifted to Gema's opponent.

The cloak, the hood, and the lack of a face. Even if there was no fire illuminating the surrounding land, even if it was stark darkness, she could recognize the Faceless... Or one of them. Despite the chilling resemblance it had to the one that plagued her dreams for years, she didn't feel the same thread of terror running through her.

"I didn't know it would drop us right in the middle of the street and... What...? Is that...?"

She didn't know if Jamie was asking a question or making a statement out of shock, but she completed his sentence for him.

"The Faceless."

His head whipped toward her, and she didn't have to look at him to sense the shock oozing from him. She heard it in his next words. "How do you know that?"

Aside from the evident shock, there was another emotion present in his tone, but the raging thunder and gushing rain made it difficult for her to decipher what.

"How do you not know what it is?" she asked in return.

His eyes lingered on her for a while before he trained them back ahead. "I know what it is. I'm just wondering what it's doing here."

"Well, now is not the time for you to wonder or for you to explain to me why it's strange that they're here. Now, we need to communicate with Gema so she can tell us what the situation is like."

"I'm sure it's obvious what the situation is like," he deadpanned.

"Yes, but we need to know what it's like inside, and if anyone is inside. What of Marcela? Can you reach her 'cause all I'm seeing now is Gema fighting a Faceless outside a burning City Hall and that doesn't tell us much about Elowen or my sister?"

In the next moment, Gema's eyes that shone with fire flashed toward them and she felt Gema knew at once. But that was enough opportunity for the Faceless to sneak a blast of darkness at Gema, who swerved just in time to miss it by a narrow margin.

"Marcela's underground, she's fighting," Jamie said with two fingers on his temples and eyes closed.

"And Zack?"

"There's no way I can communicate with him... and he's not with Marcela, either."

"Then we need to get to where Marcela is," she said, as her eyes darted around in a wild search for a possible entrance to the burning building.

"We obviously can't..."

She didn't catch the rest of Jamie's words as a force tugged at her mind. It was Her Sense, and it was trying to tell her something. She closed her eyes and tuned out Jamie's rants, focusing on the message that hummed within her. When her eyes opened, the first thing they caught was a silver rope suspended in midair that stretched further down their left.

"Jamie, do you see that?" she asked, and he stopped talking.

"See what?"

"That," she said, pointing to where the rope had started.

Jamie's eyes flashed between her and where she pointed before resting back on her. "Has the rain finally gotten to your senses?" he asked dryly.

"Just follow me. I think I've seen our way in."

She rose from her crouched position and, against Jamie's whispered protests, rushed back out into the rain.

When she reached the rope, she tried to touch it but her hand just slipped through it, feeling no form of contact, so she went on with Jamie towing behind her till the rope penetrated the ground.

"That's weird," she stated.

"What is?" he asked, standing beside her with a frown on his face and his hands on his waist.

"It goes in here," she said before she dropped to the ground and started scratching.

"What are you-"

"There's something here," she said as she shoved grass and sand aside to reveal a metal square-shaped door with a handle. She pulled at the handle, but it didn't budge.

"Let me," Jamie said, and she shifted before he shot a blast of ice. The door shattered into pieces, leaving the entire space bare and open to the pouring rain.

"Did you have to demolish it?" she asked, and he just shrugged.

Her eyes peered down to find a floor beneath, but with no stairs or ladder leading to it. She braced herself before she jumped in. Despite a slightly unsteady landing, she managed to keep all her bones in their proper places.

If she had attempted this jump a few days or weeks earlier, she wouldn't have been as confident in her landing and might have ended up in the hospital.

I guess the physical training is paying off.

She shifted for Jamie to land, which he did effortlessly.

Now safe from the torrential downpour, both pairs of eyes assessed their new surroundings.

"Which way now?" Jamie asked.

All around them were various similar tunnels to pass through, but for Karyn, only the one with the silver rope stood out.

Without warning, she strode down the tunnel and as they went further, she wondered how far they would be from the burning City Hall above.

"Karyn, are you sure you know where you're going? I believe we should have gone through the fifth tunnel on the left side of the mid-wall. That could..."

She once again tuned out Jamie's words with her eyes on the rope which started shrinking in size. Were they nearing something and what could it be? Although she had no idea what she was going to meet, the crippling feeling within her didn't make her feel good about what laid at the end of the tunnel.

When she started hearing voices, she was about to pick up the pace, but Jamie held her back. She spun, ready to reprimand him, but her words caught in her throat when a voice yelled.

"You! Don't do this! You don't have to do this!"

She would recognize that voice anywhere, anytime. And it was enough to make her wring her hands out of Jamie's grasp and push her feet forward and faster till she reached the turning.

"Kara!" she yelled, finding her sister floating in the air.

Kara turned with lips parted to speak, but she never got the words out as a blast of shadows surged at her.

Time seemed to stretch, each passing second elongating into an eternity. With bated breath, she witnessed the shadows hungrily latching onto Kara, their dark tendrils piercing her being.

Their screams were simultaneous, one bloodcurdling, the other a desperate plea.

As the shadows consumed her sister's essence, the light within Kara faded away like a dying ember. Her hands stretched out to reach for the disintegrating dust Kara was rapidly turning into, but she was too far away. Instead, delicate, silver fibers emerged, stretching and intertwining, gradually taking the shape of a hand-shaped pouch which the dust gracefully descended onto.

"No!" She rushed to hold the silver pouch in her hands to find black dust sparkling in it. What was once her sister now lay there as mere dust.

"Zack!" she heard Jamie say, but couldn't lift her eyes to meet him.

"I... was too late," Zack panted. "I saw him when he had sent the blast, but I still sent mine and it reached and killed him."

Some steps from Zack was a figure dressed in all black, with no cloak or hood, but Karyn didn't care as the tears charged down her cheeks.

"You have... Magic?" Jamie asked, but didn't wait for Zack to respond. "I won't say I'm not surprised, but I had an inkling you might. What of Elowen? Did you find her?"

"Yes, they should be at the house by now."

"And Marcela where-"

"She's with Elowen. We both found Elowen and while Marcela teleported back with her when she could, I saw a light floating away and this guy running after it. I assumed that would be Kara, so I followed them, but..."

The tone of defeat in Zack's voice tugged at her, but the stinging pain of fresh loss was too overwhelming for her to register his dejection.

A loud explosion came next, and it shook the ground above and beneath them.

"What was that?" Jamie asked, eyes moving wildly.

"That must be Gema. She said she'll blow this place up when we've gotten Elowen. Marcela must have told her already."

"We have to go," Jamie said and ran over to Karyn before placing a hand on her shoulder to teleport them out, but nothing happened. "What the-"

"Magic works in Emerfield, but they must have fortified these tunnels, since we can't teleport outside. Marcela had to run out with Elowen."

"Then we have to do the same before Gema sends this place crashing down on us," Jamie said. "C'mon, Karyn, we have to leave the way we came. Karyn!"

Her body shook limply as Jamie forcefully shook her shoulders. She'd heard all they had said and understood the urgency. With all her heart and soul, she wanted to remain there, willing and wishing this was all a dream and she would, at any moment, shoot up from her bed in her aunt's house with one square window, but she knew she couldn't.

This felt real. This was real. Kara was gone, but she couldn't put Jamie and Zack's lives at risk because none of them would leave without her and she knew it.

So she sniffed and focused on what she wanted the pouch to become. It moved in her hands till it became a sling purse which she slung over her shoulder and without a word ran in the direction they had come from, with Jamie and Zack behind her, dodging crumbling pieces of stone that fell from above. More explosions rumbled above them and when they were nearing the place they had landed, Jamie sent a blast of mist that materialized into an icy staircase.

Even when they were out, they kept running. She only stopped when she was sure the explosion was far behind them and to catch her breath. Jamie wasted no time in placing both hands on her and Zack's shoulders. In the twinkle of an eye, they were in the same messy living room they had abandoned moments ago.

She felt nauseous and the little food she had earlier in the day threatened to rush back out.

"Karyn," Jamie called, but she didn't wait to hear what he said as she dashed up the stairs.

When she entered her room, she wanted to lock the door, but silver fibers morphed out of her hands, weaving a web-like material that sealed the door shut. She vigorously shook her hands in disgust, willing for the fibers to fall off, but they stubbornly penetrated back into her.

Overwhelmed, she lost her balance and crashed to the floor, clutching the purse tightly within her trembling hands as tears streamed down her face, unimpeded by any restraint.

♛

ITNC: Still reeling from the loss, Karyn learns the truth about the real characters of her guardians.

♛

Vote, Comment, and Follow for notifications.
~
The Sparkling Authoress,
Mis-A
❤️